Innovation is almost insane by definition: most people view any truly innovative idea as stupid, because if it was a good idea, somebody would have already done it. So, the innovator is guaranteed to have more natural initial detractors than followers.
–Ben Horowitz in “Why We Prefer Founding CEOs”
via 37Signals
Foreign Policy: The Global Cities Index 2010
We are at a global inflection point. Half the world’s population is now urban — and half the world’s most global cities are Asian. The 2010 Global Cities Index, a collaboration between Foreign Policy, management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, reveals a snapshot of this pivotal moment. In 2010, five of the world’s 10 most global cities are in Asia and the Pacific: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, and Seoul. Three — New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — are American cities. Only two, London and Paris, are European. And there’s no question which way the momentum is headed: Just as more people will continue to migrate from farms to cities, more global clout will move from West to East.
via my mother-in-law, thanks mom 🙂
And I think that good actors always–or if you’re being good, anyway–you’re making it better than the script. That’s your fucking job. It’s like, Okay, the script says this? Well, watch this. Let’s just roar a little bit. Let’s see how high we can go.
–Bill Murray
On Thursday September 9, 2010, Gravel and Gage will host a central press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, presenting hard evidence that all three WTC skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, in NYC were destroyed by explosive controlled demolition.
Wow.
Asymco: It takes nearly $1 billion/yr to run iTunes
Maybe there’s a reason no one can beat iTunes.
For the last few months my team and I at Roundarch have been working with Bloomberg Sports on Decision Maker for iPad.We’re happy to announce it’s now live and available for purchase from Apple’s App Store.
Decision Maker is an application that lets you analyze any two NFL players using custom algorithms that determine who the optimal choice is.The player with the higher B-Score is the better bet that week. B-Score, the ‘Bloomberg’ Score, is based on factors that include his Performance, Opponent Matchup, Team Support and Game Conditions for that week.
We tackled the project holistically, from concept and Human Experience flow down to the user interface design, iconography and branding. One of the goals throughout the project was balancing simplicity and complexity. It had to be simple enough for novice fantasy players but also provide the complexity and details advanced fantasy players look for.
We encounter this simplicity as soon as the application loads – select a player from column 1 and one from column 2 (or use the auto-complete fields in the middle) and click ‘Run The Numbers’. Alternatively, you can refine your search from All NFL to just a position or team through the settings button at the top of each table.
Once we Run The Numbers, we’re taken to a head-to-head view of the results of our player comparison. Once again, we’re start out in the top half of the interface with the most essential information – do I sit this player or do I start this player?
As we move down to the lower half of the screen, we can view the details that make up the scores. Even for those who might not initially want to see or understand the data presented below, the interface is designed to encourage users to drill down and explore the various factors. Everything is tap-friendly and provides more context and information – from the risk/reward chart overlay to info tool tips, to radar chart tips.
A big thank you to everyone from Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports who made this application a reality.
iTunes App Store: Decision Maker – Football 2010 for iPad
The NYTimes asks, What Is It About 20-Somethings?
It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain unÂtethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.
This is a trap, right?
Microsoft is baiting me with their new commercial for Windows Phone 7.
Because they wouldn’t deliberately be presenting their new phone/phone OS as a mirage in the desert that declares, “The Revolution is coming”, right?
(via Electronista)
via Analogue
via Good Old Valves
BusinessInsider on The Difference Between Apple TV And Google TV:
Google wants to turn your TV into a computer. Apple says people specifically don’t want computers on their TV.
Bingo.
It’s the difference between a company run by engineers, and a company run by designers.
William Gibson, in an op-ed piece for the NYTimes:
Science fiction never imagined Google, but it certainly imagined computers that would advise us what to do. HAL 9000, in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” will forever come to mind, his advice, we assume, imminently reliable — before his malfunction. But HAL was a discrete entity, a genie in a bottle, something we imagined owning or being assigned. Google is a distributed entity, a two-way membrane, a game-changing tool on the order of the equally handy flint hand ax, with which we chop our way through the very densest thickets of information. Google is all of those things, and a very large and powerful corporation to boot.
Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive, economic way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is not a matter of façade, of mere external appearance; rather it is the essence of products and institutions, penetrating and comprehensive. Designing is a complex and intricate task. It is integration of technological, social and economic requirements, biological necessities, and the psychophysical effects of materials, shape, color, volume, and space: thinking in relationships.
–Lázló Maholy-Nagy, Vision In Motion, 1947 (via Daily Icon)
